The AfDB's E-Consultation on its first Human Capital Development Strategy-Have your Say!

A step for the sake of puberty reduction in Africa by AfDB must be hailed by all. In tackling the problems of africa, the human capital development component cannot be ignored. it is when people are well educated that they better understand issues and therefore make
meaningful contribution. In a typical Ghanaian local palance we say "Ayecooooooo! meaning welcome.

The idea is welcome as it will enhance development and create more jobs as a result. This will be suitable in line with Kenya's vision 2030 and Rwanda's vision 2020 as well as achievement of the MDG's. Education is a key to development.

This is an Institution famed for finding simple and clear African solutions to basic African problems in a manner that is attrative to the beneficiaries and devoid of conflict of interest.The impact these programs and initiatives have on the masses is overwhelming as much as it is encouraging. And the fact that all stakeholders are adequately consulted and involved in the implementation and devolution speaks of the bank's integrity in it's dealings. Allez! Allez!

Slt à tous le personnel de la BAD et à tout ceux qui participent de près ou de loin à ses activités.
Pour ma part, je trouve que cette initiative est louable car il etait temps qu'on apprennent de nos échecs prédents en l'occurrence l'impulsion de la croissance par le capital physique laisant ainsi le capital humain qui selon les statistiques de R LUCAS(1988) serait un determinant de la croissance. L'investissement dans le capital humain favorisera donc en plus d'un developpement économique, un developpement humain. C'est dire combien l'initiative de la BAD est de bonne augure pour l'Afrique et arrive juste à temps car bon nombre de pays Africains sont à la quete de la croissance afin de devenir émergents à moyen ou long terme.

it is a great idea if banks can invest in the development of education and the provision of health care how ever, for this to reflected in the form of poverty reduction, there shoul be a massive employment of the youths and not just for them to go to school as there is alredy a massive literacy rate in africa while onm the other hand others are finding it reluctant tro go to shool because of the high unemployment rate of the graduates so the key issue is not just to educate the population but also to provide an enmabling environment to accommodate this educated youths

I do appreciate this initiative if it will be fully implemented by the various states. Currently in Africa much attention is being paid on primary and secondary education to curb the high rates of illiteracy which is good but more focus should be made on vocational training to creat jobs for the younger population and also reformulate our university curricula towards professional courses that reflects the job market. We need medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses, engineers in all fields, science and technology should be a priority not forgetting the services sector accountants, business administrators, managers ecc.

Human Capital Development strategies usually depend on the needs and aspirations of the countries or people that design them, especially because these strategies respond to questions about (i) what type of society they want, (ii) what will the market need in order to operate efficiently, (iii) how will property, goods and services be produced, exchanged, bequeathed, (iv) what needs to be put in place to ensure efficiency in governance, accountability, public participation in the decision-making process, (v) what type of infrastructure needs to be put in place to ensure security so that business activity can prosper, (vi) how to spur the entrepreneurial spirit of individual to accelerate entrepreneurship and ownership of sustainable micro, small and medium business activities, (vii) how to make people and businesses respect the rule of law and engage in socially responsible practices or behaviors, etc… I am not sure the AfDB should be in the driver seat for such an endeavor. However, the AfDB you could encourage African countries (Through the AU) to think more along these lines and come up with integrated regional or pan African strategies (Based on existing Regional Groupings) that could be funded by the AfDB which (in association with other development partners) can help as a catalyst to accelerate the various implementation projects. One important component of this effort would be to skillfully leverage the spillover effects of return-migration or in other words the possible impact of the African Diaspora on their specific home countries and the African continent as a whole.

It seems to me like primary education is and it's challenges is underplayed. Surely, as the leading development finance institution on the continent, the AfDB's human capital development strategy should place the Bank right smack in the middle of assisting RMCs address the challenges of primary education on the continent.

cette croissance inclusive devrait en effet prendre en compte en premier lieu l'éducation, parce que toute personne bien éduquée constitue une lumière pour elle meme d'abord, pour sa communauté et la société tout entière ensuite. et pour cela il faudrait sortir des sentiers classiques de l'éducation (écoles, universités,) pour se déporter jusqu'au coeur des manières de faire de penser et d'agir des collectivités, je veux dire que cette éducation retrouve les populations les plus pauvres dans leur culture par les mass media , pourquoi pas?( Internet, la tv, la radio..). dans ce cas, l'approche de la Banque consisterait à financer des programmes d'enseignement pratiques sur la santé, la nutrition et autres.. et dans une certaine mesure à favoriser l'accès de ses populations à ces moyens de communication.

Hello AfDB, this is such a welcome idea & initiative as it relates to African development.To this end,our company; i-360connect Africa; a major resource development company that specializes in exploring diverse possibilities for the maximization of human potential,with a keen focus on Africa.In view of your draft on human capital development strategy,our company having carefully developed an operational model based on a NETWORK SYSTEM,that would wield maximum effectiveness in view of ensuring the possibility of AFDB's draft on human capital development.This model which has been developed for about 18months has within its operational system a feasible network plan having the potential of sustaining a pragmatic human capital development strategy & long term development in Africa.We believe this would become a more effective mercenary within AFDB's corporate system in delivering your mission much more effectively as Africa's no 1 premier finance institution.We have been able to mail you several notifications as touching what plan our MODEL has developed to effectively execute this mission that tends towards sustainable development in Africa.More details on the HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN our model features would yet be coming on this platform...THANKS!

A entendre parler de croissance de quel croissance veulent ils parler. Car les données en notre disposition nous dire que le niveau de croissance bien sur économique pour ne pas la définir est agréable au niveau du continent.
Donc je veux savoir quel objectif la banque se fixe. Pour la santé je pense avec une population en majorité jeune cela se recherche dans des pays dit développé . donc la croissance inclusive suggère de mettre les moyens à leurs disposition nous avons les ressources idoine pour créer le bien être. Il est impératif de réflechir à cela je ne suis pas contre vos proposition mais je dirais qu'on a meilleur qu'ailleurs.

Pour ne pas être péssimiste je dirai que cela est une bonne initiatiave car cela y va par une convergence des énergies et surtout des institutions qui sont sur le continent qui pour moi attendent que l'individus puissent trouver ses propres moyens pour se former et après le débaucher mais que ira faire cet individus si ce n'est de s'enrichir pour honorer ces engagements vis à vis de ses créanciers.
Pour cela il faut voir en cela une forte problématique de savoir quoi apprendre? pour quoi faire? pour servir qui?
Sachant que tous reconnais que l'afrique est le continent qui tire les autres je pense qu'il est temps de reflechir à une croissance inclusive tourné vers le modèle asiatique. On dira que ceux qui sont formé ne sont pas compétent pour reléver le défit du millénaire utilisons les mécanismes à notre disposition on vera la suite

Il a fallu au Corée du nord pas moins de 5 génération pour booster son développement, le développement repose sur la diversification du savoir faire-savoir être-savoir-vivre et savoir-anticiper sur l'avenir.
Le capital humain est primordial pour le développement tous les pays égermant ont eu a faire une politique de formation de son peuple par le biais du partenariat.
l'auto-suffisance alimentaire passe par l'agriculture de base qui est nécessaire a fin de passée a l'étape suivant.
la formation est primordial dans chaque secteur, faisant un mouvement d'ensemble se qui prône une activité bien definie.
sur les secteur porteur en mettant en ^place une politique sectoriel bien planifiée.

It is a great initiative if it is yet to be implemented with a full gear and commitments. I believe this would solve he problem of high unemployment prevailing in Africa, which entails to severe poverty. I am sure if is implemented in a way that realizes the potentials of African youngsters, it would give a miraculous change for the continent!

The strategy rightly puts emphasis on the foremost emerging challenge in Africa – the plight of millions of unemployed youth across the continent. It’s encouraging to know that, “the Bank’s vision for Human Capital Development in Africa is to create jobs, provide equal opportunities and harness the potential of 1 billion people to promote inclusive growth.” The document further states that “realizing this vision requires measures to increase youth employment opportunities and competitiveness…” The measures to be taken, however, must go beyond stepping up support for TVET and policy reforms to make the labor market more flexible. Innovative programs designed to help the youth to tap into their creative spirit are needed to unleash and harness the innovative capacities of the young Africans so they can create their own employment opportunities. At Africa Unbound we’ve been working on such programs and will be glad to share our experiences and lessons learned.

While well-intentioned, this strategy has some major problems:
--We have been implementing human capital development strategies for 50 years with little, if any, impact.
--Instead of an integrated human development strategy, we need an integrated development strategy.
--Key to the latter is job creation and this needs to be innovative and elaborated.
--At the same time, the purpose of education is much more than jobs and the strategy gives that short shrift.
--Entirely too much is expected of the private sector. There is no evidence it will be able to fill gaps or that it does so in the public interest.

Sincerely speaking,this is a welcome development.This will enable African youths to fully engage into capacity building projects proper.In return this will not only reduce the rate of unemployment but will also produce great innovators, entreprenuers and even great investors among African youth.I recommend the practice of Human Capital Development Strategy without any reservation.
Best Regards.
Stanley Akudinobi
Federal University of Technology Owerri

Thanks, and very welcome to this draft report ; i notice "A strategy for Human Capital Development is urgently required because education, nutrition, health and safety nets are inextricably linked with economic growth and poverty reduction. "

What a pleasure to find someone who identifies the issues so calerly

With regard to the Human Capital Development strategy, here are a few comments|

1. This is a very welcome draft report and puts into context the pressing development issues especially in relation to youth unemployment. Since as HelpAge International, our core business is the aging population, it would be important to have some reference to the growing ageing population in Africa even though it may not be comparable in size to that in Asia. There is an upcoming IAGG Africa conference in Cape Town in November 2012 and IFA is planning one in Cameroon in 2013. Globally the population is aging and so we also need to recognize this in the HD context. The past several years has witnessed an unprecedented stretching of the human life span. This aging of the global population is without parallel in human history (Bengston and Lowenstein 2004). If these demographic trends continue to escalate, by 2050 the number of older people globally will exceed the number of young for the first time since formal records began raising questions of the power of the nation state in the context of global aging.
2. Page 5 - the effect of the current predictions of a second recession related to the euro zone need to be included since this will impact on our development programmes and the returnees from the Diaspora and exacerbate the already critical challenges related to unemployment.
3. Page 7- on Social Protection funding - we need to also look more critically at our countries’ ability to fund social protection which relates to: good governance and accountability, balancing different types of taxation, management of natural resources, building the tax admin capacity, dealing with the ‘leaks’ in our financial management and budgets, increasing the tax base through tapping more into the informal sector and tax reforms to mobilize more sustainable revenue. See paper on Innovative financing for Africa by Emmanuel Nnadozie, Devex, February 2012.

4. Discussion on labour markets and the informal sector- we need to think more about how do we turn the informal sector into a more formal one? What are the mechanisms we need to put in place since it is such a large employer of the youth and is not necessarily being effectively taxed so the revenue can be utilized for employment creation.

5. Page 16-comments in the box-these are very critical, highlighting the need to invest in a dynamic education curriculum revision so that the graduates produced are potential employers rather than unemployed employees. This ties in with the need for more investment in research- What can our governments and higher learning institutions do to produce more appropriately skilled and qualified graduates?

6. Quality of education- should we not be investing more in in-service training since a lot of our teachers are not qualified? Training can be another motivator to reduce teacher absenteeism and improve the quality of education, aside from the issues of their poor terms and conditions.

7. Page 47- the safety nets discussion- this needs to go beyond social security. What about short term measures with quick results such as cash transfers which help to address poverty? Let's also invest in compulsory pension schemes although this is currently only for the formal sector employees. How can we scale up some of the current social protection schemes which appear to be working? In relation to discussions on micro finance, the most vulnerable populations are not necessarily catered for. Older persons for example have issues around their limited access to credit.

8. The role of civil society needs to be clearer in this whole paper, since they are providing complementary services to our governments and can address issues of rights and accountability.

9. Time line at the end of the paper-Have the face to face consultative discussions taken place because HelpAge International in Africa would be interested in participating.

Dear AfDB team,

This is a good initiative, of involving stakeholders. Our institution, KCA University in Kenya will submit its feedback.

Regards,

Non-communicable conditions such as Diabetes, Cancers, Heart diseases, injuries are on the increase with common risk factors. The conditions once thoght of as conditions of the rich, are now here with us. The country still crappling with communicable diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, cholera etc. The area is therefore not as prioritized. My request is the Bank to consider support in this area (Human and financial capcity enhancement)
Regards.

Joyce Nato, WHO Kenya